Financial Advisors in North America Say AI Can Help Grow Their Business, but Adoption Can Be Challenging, Accenture Research Reveals
22 June 2022 - 9:59PM
Business Wire
More than half of advisors believe that their
firm is taking on too many AI pilots at once or that AI tools are
too complicated to use
Although the vast majority of financial advisors in North
America believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will transform
financial advice and help drive business growth, there are some
challenges to overcome to accelerate adoption, according to new
research from Accenture (NYSE: ACN).
The research, “AI in Wealth Management: A Financial Advisor
Study,” is based on a survey of 500 licensed financial advisors in
the U.S. and Canada working at major wealth managers, banks,
insurers and independent wealth firms.
A key finding: Almost all (98%) of the advisors surveyed believe
that AI is transforming how advice is created for, delivered to and
consumed by clients, and 97% believe that AI can help grow their
book of business organically by more than 20%.
However, while more than nine in 10 (92%) advisors acknowledge
that their firms have taken steps to act on their AI strategies —
from proof of concepts to deploying AI within targeted business
units, or even scaling it across the entire organization — they
also pointed to several barriers to adoption that need to be
addressed.
For example, half (50%) said that their wealth management firms
are challenged to act on their AI vision, 55% said that their
firms’ AI tools and insights are too complicated to use, and more
than six in 10 (64%) said their firm is taking on too many AI
pilots at once in its push to adopt the technology.
“Against increasingly challenging market conditions, AI has the
potential to help wealth managers sustain and drive new growth,
create operating efficiencies and transform the customer experience
through more hyper-personalized insights and products,” said Scott
Reddel, who leads Accenture’s wealth management practice in North
America. “Now isn’t the time to take your foot off the pedal. Firms
can overcome adoption speedbumps with continued commitment from
management, focused applications that deliver business value, and —
perhaps most critically — collaboration across business lines.”
The need to scale and harness AI in wealth management more
effectively is essential. In fact, a recent cross-industry
Accenture report, “The Art of AI Maturity: Advancing from Practice
to Performance,” found that the most AI-mature companies achieved
50% higher revenue growth than their peers and that the capital
markets and banking industry, which includes wealth management, had
the lowest AI maturity score out of 17 industries analyzed.
Among other key findings from the “AI in Wealth Management”
research:
- Four in five (80%) financial advisors are ready to adopt more
AI-based client engagement and collaboration tools, and 87% believe
that AI’s greatest benefit is translating clients’ data into
actionable insights.
- Four in five advisors (80%) also prefer to use AI tools to
automate time-consuming and manual tasks.
- More than four in 10 advisors (44%) believe that their firm’s
culture is the biggest impediment to adopting AI.
“AI can help wealth management firms achieve a strong
competitive advantage, and our research tells us that the vast
majority of advisors are ready to adopt the technology,” said Keri
Smith, Applied Intelligence lead for Accenture’s Banking and
Capital Markets industry practices. “But to fully realize the value
of AI, insights derived from it must be specific, actionable and
easy to understand. Wealth managers need to do a better job
creating clear use cases that help advisors serve their clients
better or reduce time spent on administrative tasks, all while
giving their advisors a voice in the process.”
For more information on the research, visit:
www.accenture.com/AdvisorAI.
Methodology To analyze attitudes toward artificial
intelligence among licensed financial advisors, Accenture surveyed
500 advisors from a variety of financial services firms across the
United States and Canada, including wealth managers, national and
regional banks, private banks, insurance wealth companies, and
registered investment advisors. The survey was conducted between
January and March 2022.
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Michael McGinn Accenture +1 312 693 5707
m.mcginn@accenture.com
Victoria Ancell Accenture +44 7446 27759
v.ancell@accenture.com
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